Qasali Pridemage

The trick that makes a two-drop earn its slot is bundling: a 2/2 that can attend to combat, an exalted trigger that turns it into a credible lone attacker, and a sacrifice ability that answers any artifact or enchantment for one mana. The activated ability is the spine. Artifact and enchantment removal has historically been a feast-or-famine effect: against the wrong opponent it sits dead, so designers price it cheap and players treat it as conditional. Stapling that effect to a body that can also pressure life totals solves the dead-card problem; even when there is nothing to destroy, the creature still attacks, still triggers exalted, still does work. The sacrifice clause is what gives the answer its reach. Because the card removes itself to fire, it slips past anything that would otherwise neutralize a permanent-based answer by removing or locking the permanent: it does not need to survive to do its job, it only needs to be on the battlefield when you decide to spend it. Exalted reads like a sweetener until you notice how often this is the only creature swinging in a grindy game, at which point the +1/+1 is genuine damage on a body the green-white toolbox was always willing to deploy. That density of relevant lines on a single two-drop is why it became the reference point for the answer-on-a-creature design, the card later green-white utility bodies get measured against.